Communities

IET Communities provide like-minded people with opportunities to share ideas, collaborate, learn and network. With more than 100 Local and Technical Networks around the world, you can feel confident of finding a community that suits your interests.

Speaker cones were made of paper before various synthetic polymers replaced them. The advantage of paper was attributed to the randomly varying fibre lengths which reduced standing waves in the cone. Resonance and standing waves were more efeectively damped by the material than in almost any other material. Is this why it has proved so difficult to use synthetics for musical instruments?. BTW: There was a quite good polymer violin produced here in Canada a decade or so ago,. I am not sure what became of it.

By coincidence, an hour ago I was thinking not about speaker cones but speaker cabinets. For musical instrument speakers these are traditionally made of birch ply, which as Peter suggests is sufficiently random to give an excellent combination of damping and stiffness. But it's blooming heavy! I was just trying to think what a nice light, "randomised" and strong material would be to build a small guitar speaker cabinet from?